This invention relates to telecommunications systems and more particularly to a system and method in which a called party may be identified by voice command and reached universally, without digit dialing, and under open access network control.
The need to continually improve the efficiency and precision with which telephone callers may specify and be connected to a desired called party is as old as the telephone system itself. It is well known that long before technology was developed for direct dialing and automated switching, telephone lines were connected to a manual exchange, where live operators plugged cords in and out of jacks to make connections at the voice request of the caller. As telephone usage became more widespread, the use of numeric direct dialing technology eventually replaced the need for live operators to make physical connections. A fundamental problem with numeric direct dialing, however, is that the caller has to know, and subsequently remember, the telephone number of the party desired to be called. In fact, one distinct advantage of the antiquated manual exchange system was that all the caller had to do was speak the name of the called party and the operator could make the connection based on no more than that instruction.
Various technologies are known in the art that are directed to assist a caller reaching a called party with reduced reliance on already knowing a specific number. Some of these technologies are described below:
800 and Vanity Numbers
Digit-dialed 800, or INWATS, has been around for several decades. The data base call processing method for the 800 number using out of band signaling has enhanced the functionality of INWATS with flexible band assignment, making it more economical and efficient. It has also made possible a single portable 800 number that could be used by a subscribing entity with multiple locations, and for terminating calls to be distributed based on variables such as their origination point, time of day, day of week, etc. INWATS has been a commercially successful and valuable tool for businesses and other entities who use it to encourage calls from customers, prospects or constituents.
These benefits of the 800 number are nonetheless still subject to the problem of potential customers remembering the 800 number to initiate a call. Vanity numbers (phone numbers that spell a name or phrase) are often used by businesses to facilitate recall of their telephone numbers by customers, and thus are in high demand. By using the alpha characters assigned to each number on a telephone dial or keypad, vanity numbers enable a customer to recall an easily remembered word or phrase rather than a number, which may be more difficult to remember.
Numbers for 800 service are assigned to businesses on a first-come, first-serve basis. Vanity numbers have proven to be very effective in increasing telephone business for their owners. While they are in high demand, however, good vanity numbers are limited in supply. Vanity numbers constrain the subscriber to seven character words or phrases. Due to the common sequence of consonants and vowels needed to create a seven letter word or phrase, very few vanity numbers are left to meet current and future demand. Further, as the universe of available vanity numbers diminishes, they cease to be particularly useful as an aide-memoir as they become less descriptive of the name or the nature of the business owning the number. This lack of vanity number availability also places businesses owning a good vanity number somewhat serendipitously at a considerable competitive advantage over emerging businesses.
Voice Activated Dialing
Prior art voice activated dialing utilizes voice recognition technology to allow the caller to subscribe to a service and then be able to call other parties by speaking a key word or phrase into their receiver such as the called party""s name, title or a location (e.g., xe2x80x9ccall Mike,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9ccall doctor,xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9ccall home.xe2x80x9d) This can be done as soon as the phone is off hook, but may also be activated via an access or activation number or code. Typically a stand alone voice recognition processor is located in a local central office near the subscriber as an adjunct to the switch. A unique file is set up for each calling subscriber who is at liberty to populate it with key words of the subscriber""s choosing. Except for system maintenance, no one but the subscriber has access and control of the calling file in the data base. While most current applications of voice activated dialing involve a data base housed in a local central office, there are also technologies that place this function either in the customer""s telephone equipment, or in a central open access network location.
While existing voice dialing inventions are perhaps appealing for their technical novelty, they provide little more utility than the programmable speed dialing keys that may be found on many telephones. Both features merely eliminate the need for the caller to dial the entire number manually when calling within a small personalized universe of frequently-called numbers, most of which the caller usually knows by heart anyway. Both generally reduce the time for manual dialing. In most cases, however, voice activated dialing is more costly than speed dialing to the user. Voice activated dialing does add utility over speed dialing for situations where hands need to be free such as while driving, or where the user may be visually or physically impaired. It may provide access to more numbers than is typical for most phone equipment with speed dialing capabilities. It is expected, however, that the demand for voice activated dialing will be limited to a small number of subscribers willing to pay for the service.
Further, since the originating subscriber defines the words and phrases that will be used to identify called parties, and since use is expected to involve only a small portion of the population, the prior art application of voice activated dialing is of little value to called parties such as businesses interested in increasing telephone traffic by making it easier for prospects to call them.
Moreover, existing voice activated dialing services are generally limited in the number of terminating locations that can be reached, based on the set of names per subscriber. Currently, a typical subscriber data file has a limited capacity of approximately 60 names for initiating voice activated calls. The number of businesses that will benefit from open access network control voice activated dialing exceeds this current 60 name per subscriber capacity within existing technology. In all probability, only a small fraction of a business""s market or potential customers will actually be subscribed to voice activated dialing. In fact, most businesses will hope to generate business from customer prospects who, even if they are voice activated dialing subscribers, will most likely not have programmed the business""s name into their personal voice dialing file. Businesses will want to be in control of making their name accessible to their entire market. Thus, unless voice activated dialing is made available to all potential customers, it is of little value to businesses trying to attract telephone commerce.
Voice Activated 1+ Information
Voice activated 1+ Information allows a caller to use voice activated dialing to initiate a call to live operator for directory assistance. Once the operator has provided the number, the call can be automatically set up without the caller having to dial the number manually. While providing value in situations where hands need to be free, such as while driving, this service is of no special value to commercial terminating parties wishing to increase telephone traffic. First, the caller must pay for the service, and normally at a price per call greatly in excess of manual dialing because of the cost of live operator intervention. Callers therefore tend to use the service only when there is no other alternative. Second, 1+ Information is generally a localized service, and operators normally require callers to make additional long distance calls to other LATAs when the terminating party is not found in the region covered by their service. This increases the cost to the caller. Third, the caller is often required to know the area code in which the terminating party may be found before either local or long distance 1+ Information operators can help. Clearly, a service in which one number, advantageously toll-free, may be called to enable subsequent connection by voice activated dialing would improve on 1+ Information services.
Universal Number Access
Many commercial organizations and businesses have stores or offices located in multiple geographic locations to be near the customers they serve. It is well known in the art that such businesses often use 800 or similar toll-free numbers to attract calls to a central location, at which point the call is then routed to the business location nearest the caller. The businesses must pay for the costs associated with the initial 800 call that was toll-free to the caller, and then the cost of routing and then connecting to the local location. Further, the toll-free number is susceptible to all the problems of being identified and remembered by the caller as set forth above in the section discussing vanity numbers. It would be clearly advantageous and cost-effective to such businesses to be able to promote a single universal number that could automatically direct calls to the business location nearest the originating point of the call without having to route the call through a central location.
The present invention is directed to voice activated dialing as controlled in an open access network. Its specific application and preferred embodiment as described herein is Commercial Voice Dialing (hereafter also xe2x80x9cCVDxe2x80x9d), a system and method that uses voice recognition technologies to allow anyone using any phone on the public network to enter an access code and/or number, and then speak the name, key word, or phrase of a subscribing business or commercial party to which they desire to be connected. From the following description it will be appreciated that CVD is one specific commercial application of the present invention, and that a preferred embodiment herein is directed to a system and method in which such businesses are advantageously identified and reached through an xe2x80x9c800xe2x80x9d or similar toll environment. It will be nonetheless understood by those in this art that the present invention is expressly not limited to this particular application and its embodiment, and may in fact be used in any open access network in which voice dialing with improved automated speech recognition accuracy may be advantageous in assisting callers to identify and reach a desired called party, or xe2x80x9cterminating partyxe2x80x9d as also referred to hereafter.
It will be further understood by those in this art that the present invention is not limited to specific architectures or deployments on a telecommunications network. The presently preferred embodiment described herein uses an Intelligent Network (IN) to control the system, advantageously implementing remote and decentralized call processing and control through interconnected Service Control Points (SCPs). It will be nonetheless appreciated by those of skill in this art that the present invention may also be deployed using traditional architecture located at one or more centralized Service Nodes (SNs), advantageously also employing Intelligent Peripherals (IPs) to facilitate call processing and control.
Further, by being under network control, the service is not dependent on a designated line and is thus available to users anywhere on the Public Switched Telephone Network (xe2x80x9cPSTNxe2x80x9d). Generally, the system solicits callers to speak the name of a desired terminating party, which advantageously is the name of a subscribing business. The system will then run the caller""s voice signals against records in one or more databases, and when a match is made, will connect the caller to the matched terminating party. Advantageously, the subscribing business (or other entity interested in receiving calls) pays for the service much the way that the toll charges on xe2x80x9c800xe2x80x9d calls are paid for. The present invention nonetheless also contemplates and discloses an embodiment in which the calling party may pay for calls. The quantity of word-to-routing number translations, or call completions using CVD is recorded for billing. Callers may access the service using an 800 number, a common access code, or an abbreviated number. CVD involves network control voice activated call routing using one or several common central service control point(s) and data base(s).
As noted, a preferred embodiment herein uses an Intelligent Network (xe2x80x9cINxe2x80x9d) to control the system. In such an environment, a specific incoming access code and/or number is recognized and triggers the IN to activate voice recognition capabilities for a call. An initial voice transport link is set up between the caller and an Intelligent Peripheral (xe2x80x9cIPxe2x80x9d) within the IN. A local Intelligent Service Control Point (xe2x80x9cISCPxe2x80x9d) then allows calls to be set up to the terminating party, dropping the initial voice transport link once a direct link has been set up between the calling and terminating parties.
One technical advantage of using an IN in this way is that once the terminating party has been identified, the link between the calling party and the terminating party may be monitored and maintained by software in the IP within the IN, and the call itself need never be routed through the Service Node. This technical advantage distinguishes the present invention over traditional switch vendor solutions, in that although calls will still be routed to an IP to enable voice communication of the callname utterance, no more than a single toll link need be active at any point during the call, regardless of whether the call is made to the IP from within the exchange or from outside the exchange. Thus, the call itself need never be routed through the Service Node.
A further technical advantage of using an IN in this way is that by reading the Automatic Number Identification (xe2x80x9cANIxe2x80x9d) of the caller, the IN may recognize calls incoming to a business with multiple locations, and may then direct the calls to the business locations that are nearest to the calling parties. The call may thereby be connected without voice trunks crossing LATA boundaries. Such call processing is enabled by voice recognition in the ISCP that matches the spoken name of the called business to routing information to be provided by the business.
It will therefore be understood that CVD may be made available to virtually all telephones on the PSTN, limited only by the preferences of the businesses on the CVD platform. The originating party need not be pre-subscribed to any voice dialing services to use CVD. It will also be appreciated that CVD applies not only to intercarrier toll calls, but to the many local customer-to-business calls that ordinarily do not involve toll charges.
The foregoing description illustrates a further advantage of the present invention in that it will serve both calling and terminating parties by eliminating the need for remembering or looking up numerous telephone numbers. Reliance on vanity numbers is dramatically reduced, since subscribers to CVD are no longer required to look to a limited supply of vanity numbers, most of which may not be particularly descriptive of the business or even convenient to remember. The role of directory services such as telephone books and live operator information services is also diminished. This brings economic advantages to the operation of a telephone service as a whole. Additional peripheral advantages will also be appreciated, such as facilitating telephone service for the handicapped, or for mobile/cellular users without access to a telephone directory and for whom hands-free operation allows other activities, such as driving, to be conducted more safely. Additionally, the subscribing business may receive one periodic invoice for the service, itemizing all CVD connections regardless of origin or PSTN connection route.
As described, another advantage of the present invention that it is under open access network control. As a result, CVD is available from any location on the PSTN, and not just exclusively from one or more designated phone lines. This feature is useful to all businesses, who then become more easily reachable by telephone by all their potential customers regardless of the Local Exchange Carrier (xe2x80x9cLECxe2x80x9d) or Inter-exchange Carrier (xe2x80x9cIXCxe2x80x9d) to which they or their customers subscribe, and without any of those customers required to be pre-subscribed to an end user voice-activated dialing service. Further, smaller and remote communities, whose subscriber bases might otherwise be too small by themselves to economically justify voice dialing deployment, may be served instead by a CVD system physically deployed in a larger, distant community of subscribers.
The open access network control feature is also highly advantageous in that it represents a flexible technology that will be highly responsive to future developments in the applicable arts without extensive modification. The topology is easily adaptable to multiple systems and platforms, and to various commercially available hardware and software products. As a result, there is no need for investment in a single proprietary technology. A wider variety of competitive new products may thus be selected from, which, when integrated and updated, will ensure the system performs well and keeps pace with technology advances for years to come.
A still further technical advantage of CVD is that it features intelligence in the IN that analyzes speech characteristics of the calling party, the geographic location of the calling party, and the geographic location of the terminating party against stored data. This intelligence then uses the results to identify sets of businesses most likely to be of interest to the caller, and also adapts voice recognition to interpret the caller""s utterances more accurately. As a result, the effective performance of the system is optimized, because the caller""s utterances will be compared against a smaller vocabulary of entries, and with more precision. This may in turn reduce the amount of input and interaction expected of the calling party in identifying and being connected to the desired terminating party. Examples of this intelligence, to be described more fully below, include:
(a) Identifying the ANI and/or zip code of the calling party to a likely set of local, regional and national businesses;
(b) Identifying xe2x80x9cpointerxe2x80x9d words within a calling party""s utterance to pre-defined groups of business types likely to include the desired terminating party;
(c) Expecting speech patterns and accents indigenous to particular geographic areas from calls incoming from those areas;
(d) Identifying a particular speech pattern or accent and adapting voice recognition to it;
(e) Identifying specific calling parties, or groups thereof, to a particular set of local, regional and national businesses based on statistics and historical/predicted calling patterns;
(f) Identifying calling parties speaking in a specific language to a particular set of local, regional and national businesses developed for speakers of that language; and
(g) Recognizing when the communications device being used by the calling party is a non-standard handset, such as a mobile phone or a speaker phone, and then adapting voice recognition to reception peculiarities expected of that type of communications device.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and the specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.